I would be interested how much of the “there is just no demand for EVs in the US” narrative is either:
manufactured consent, pumped out on all corporate owned media to foster demand for oil
the fact that US companies refuse to make affordable EVs, and the demand is plateauing only for luxury cars
The problem with the cheap Chinese EV import is that once you’re hooked on that, your domestic EV industry will not develop, which makes it reasonable to guard against. Then again, you actually have to whip your domestic production into shape. I think the US has the whole subsidy game upside down - governments should subsidize societally positive actions even if companies are currently not doing them, like cheap electric cars in this case; and not just make subsidies that target specific companies and sectors to throw government money at them and let their CEOs do whatever they like.
EV sales in the US were 50% higher in 2023 than in 2022. So not only is there plenty of demand, but demand is rapidly growing.
However, car manufacturers anticipated even faster growth, hence they made more EVs than they could sell, hence all the complaints about unsold inventory and “lack of demand for EVs”.
You’re right about subsidies incentivizing all the wrong things. US fossil fuel subsidies are somewhere in the neighborhood of $1T, with global subsidies for the industry in the neighborhood of $7T. It’s preposterous.
If legacy automakers don’t want to make affordable EVs, so be it. I would also prefer to help give an edge to a thriving local industry and develop more local jobs but they need to actually cooperate. In the face of serious competition, despite huge economic protectionist barriers, they don’t want to compete in this market.
“You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink.” <==> you can create incentives to develop local industry and protectionism to help them while they’re weak but you can’t make them succeed
The thing is that on the one side this is becoming a national security issue where China is basically building a capability where they can cripple the US economy, on the other side Tesla is already getting subsidized to high heaven already, so it’s more about whether the US government deigns to actually attach strings to the carrots it hands out quite regularly.
On the first topic though, it wouldn’t be a big problem if the US would start to depend on Chinese imports more, as long as all that is symmetrical and China develops dependencies on US imports. We got the French and the Germans to stop trying to kill each other that way. The question is whether China expects this to be a good faith let’s tie ourselves together deal, or a one-sided let’s get ahead by getting leverage thing.
IMO drop in EV demand is because people discovering what an asshat Elon is. In LA previously I saw a large number of Teslas, now more and more other companies like BMW, Mercedes, Hundai and also ones that I previously never heard of like Lucid, Polestar.
I’m not saying Teslas disappeared, there’s still a lot of them (especially 3), but in LA people seem to change cars frequently and along new EVs with temporary license plates there are now many non-Teslas that I did not see before.
I would be interested how much of the “there is just no demand for EVs in the US” narrative is either:
The problem with the cheap Chinese EV import is that once you’re hooked on that, your domestic EV industry will not develop, which makes it reasonable to guard against. Then again, you actually have to whip your domestic production into shape. I think the US has the whole subsidy game upside down - governments should subsidize societally positive actions even if companies are currently not doing them, like cheap electric cars in this case; and not just make subsidies that target specific companies and sectors to throw government money at them and let their CEOs do whatever they like.
EV sales in the US were 50% higher in 2023 than in 2022. So not only is there plenty of demand, but demand is rapidly growing.
However, car manufacturers anticipated even faster growth, hence they made more EVs than they could sell, hence all the complaints about unsold inventory and “lack of demand for EVs”.
You’re right about subsidies incentivizing all the wrong things. US fossil fuel subsidies are somewhere in the neighborhood of $1T, with global subsidies for the industry in the neighborhood of $7T. It’s preposterous.
You don’t want an $80,000 EV version of an F150?!?! But you get 7k off of it!
If legacy automakers don’t want to make affordable EVs, so be it. I would also prefer to help give an edge to a thriving local industry and develop more local jobs but they need to actually cooperate. In the face of serious competition, despite huge economic protectionist barriers, they don’t want to compete in this market.
“You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them drink.” <==> you can create incentives to develop local industry and protectionism to help them while they’re weak but you can’t make them succeed
The thing is that on the one side this is becoming a national security issue where China is basically building a capability where they can cripple the US economy, on the other side Tesla is already getting subsidized to high heaven already, so it’s more about whether the US government deigns to actually attach strings to the carrots it hands out quite regularly.
On the first topic though, it wouldn’t be a big problem if the US would start to depend on Chinese imports more, as long as all that is symmetrical and China develops dependencies on US imports. We got the French and the Germans to stop trying to kill each other that way. The question is whether China expects this to be a good faith let’s tie ourselves together deal, or a one-sided let’s get ahead by getting leverage thing.
IMO drop in EV demand is because people discovering what an asshat Elon is. In LA previously I saw a large number of Teslas, now more and more other companies like BMW, Mercedes, Hundai and also ones that I previously never heard of like Lucid, Polestar.
I still see way more Teslas in Denver, but also finally some Kias, Rivians and others.
I’m not saying Teslas disappeared, there’s still a lot of them (especially 3), but in LA people seem to change cars frequently and along new EVs with temporary license plates there are now many non-Teslas that I did not see before.
Petro dollar will be gone and with it America as the sole beneficiary of its use. Major geo political changes